On December 8, 2014, about 30 middle-school students from Newark and Brooklyn arrived at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, beside the White House. They had come for an Hour of Code, and the president joined them. Working through a tutorial built on Disney’s Frozen, Barack Obama typed one line: moveForward(100);. It sent an animated character 100 pixels across the screen. The White House called him “the first president to write a line of code.”
For a decade, that line stood for a promise: learn to code, and the future will make room for you. Twelve years later, Superprof data suggests that Americans are rewriting the plan. Between September 2025 and August 2026, requests for Python tutoring on Superprof fell 45%. Over the same months, tennis coaching rose 46%, Japanese more than doubled, and nursing grew faster than any other academic subject.
Overall demand for lessons grew 16%, so this is not a story of people learning less. It is a story of people learning differently. Below, we look at what changed and what may explain it. We also ask what it means if you are looking for new skills to learn this year.
Which skills are Americans dropping?
Coding and number-heavy office skills fell together. Python lost 45% of its requests, statistics 35%, accounting 34%, economics 31%, programming 27% and Excel 26%. Several of these are tasks that AI assistants can now draft on request, starting with code.
The slide was gradual. Python requests fell month after month across the two years we tracked, with no single cliff.
The job market tells a similar story. US employment of computer programmers fell in early 2025 to its lowest level since 1980, according to Fortune. The Bureau of Labor Statistics now projects programmer jobs to shrink 7% between 2025 and 2035.
Students noticed too. New computer science bachelor’s enrollments fell 12.9% in 2025, the first drop after years of growth, reports the Computing Research Association. We cannot prove why each learner changed course. Still, the timing lines up with AI tools that write working code on request.
How “learn to code” went from slogan to second thoughts
The slogan did not fade overnight. It took a decade of presidential speeches, school funding and one very fast chatbot. Step through the milestones below.
It is our job to create computing technology such that nobody has to program. And that the programming language is human.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, World Government Summit, February 2024
That is one CEO’s forecast, not a settled fact. Programming still pays well: the median US programmer earned $100,390 in 2025, according to the BLS. What has shifted is the feeling that code is the one safe bet.
What are Americans learning instead?
Americans are booking more lessons in sports, languages, care and hands-on crafts. Japanese grew 108%, soccer 84%, Spanish conversation 77%, cooking 72% and personal training 65%. The 13 fastest-growing subjects all rose by at least 45% in a year.
Explore all 24 subjects that cleared our volume thresholds. Filter by direction or by family of skills, or sort by size.
One honest caveat: not every sport is booming. Swimming fell 30%, from 5,505 requests to 3,831, and salsa dropped 29%. The pattern is not simply sport over study. It favors skills that are hard to hand to a machine: a backhand, a conversation in Japanese, a patient’s care.
Why is tennis booming in America?
ennis is now the most-requested sports lesson on Superprof in the US, with 6,788 requests in a year, up 46%. The wider game is growing too. The USTA counted 27.3 million American players in 2025, its sixth straight year of growth.
Soccer grew even faster on Superprof, up 84%, in the year the US co-hosted the 2026 FIFA World Cup. FIFA reports a 15.8% rise in US soccer participation between 2024 and 2025.
New York nearly doubled, while San Francisco, the capital of tech, went from 28 requests to 190. New to the court? Start with the basic rules of tennis, then read our guide to understanding tennis skill levels.
A coach speeds up the first months, when grip and footwork habits form. You can compare local tennis lessons by city and level.
Why did Japanese lessons double?
Japanese requests rose from 959 to 1,994, the fastest growth of any language on Superprof in the US. Travel is one likely driver. Japan welcomed 3.3 million visitors from the United States in 2025, up 21.4% on the year before, according to JNTO figures.
- Japanese: +108% (959 → 1,994 requests)
- Spanish conversation: +77% (399 → 708)
- Russian: +67% (869 → 1,455)
- Italian: +46% (1,386 → 2,022)
- German: +45% (929 → 1,346)
Look closely and conversation stands out. Spanish conversation, a subject built around speaking, grew 77%. If you are starting Japanese, see our tips for studying Japanese on your own, or compare the hardest languages for English speakers. When you want feedback on your speaking, Japanese classes with a tutor make the difference.
Care over code: why nursing grew fastest
Nursing requests climbed from 2,847 to 4,370, a 53% rise and the fastest of any academic subject. Reading followed closely at 51%. Americans are not only learning less code. They are learning to care.
2,847 to 4,370 requests on Superprof US, Sept 2025 to Aug 2026
The job outlook backs that choice. The BLS projects registered nurse jobs to grow 6% from 2025 to 2035, faster than average, with about 180,800 openings each year. If you are weighing programs, start with our guide to top US nursing schools and see how nursing tutoring works.
Hands-on skills rose too. Cooking grew 72%, cello 52% and sewing 47%. No app can practice them for you, and all of them reward a patient teacher.
Is it still worth learning to code in 2026?
Yes, if you choose it for the right reasons. Programming still drew 2,325 requests on Superprof this year, and it still pays well. What has changed is the reason to learn it. With AI writing routine code, the value moves toward understanding problems, checking output and building with others.
If you love building things, keep going. You can test your programming level, or take our quiz on is coding right for you. A coding tutor can then help you focus on what the tools cannot do for you.
Four questions to choose your next skill
1.
Will you use it every week?
Will you use it every week?
2.
Does it need a human in the loop?
Coaching, conversation and care are hard to hand to software.
3.
Does it pay off in more than one way?
Nursing can lead to a career, while tennis and cooking enrich everyday life.
4.
Can you get feedback early?
A tutor spots mistakes in the first weeks, before they turn into habits.
Still deciding between hobbies to learn? Our quiz can help you find your next hobby.
How we measured this
This study uses Superprof’s own data. We counted every lesson request made on Superprof in the United States from September 2025 to August 2026. We then compared them with the same 12 months a year earlier: 311,917 requests in the latest year, against 269,770 the year before.
All percentages are year over year. Growing subjects needed at least 500 requests in the latest year and 200 in the prior one, and the thresholds were reversed for declines. Subjects newly added to the catalog, such as ASVAB prep, were excluded. City figures use the city recorded on each request.
Sources
- Computing Research Association. “Taulbee Survey 2025: Annual Report.” CRA, 2026, https://datavisualization.cra.org/TaulbeeReports/2025/conclusion.html. Accessed 8 Oct. 2026.
- DeVon, Cheyenne. “On ChatGPT’s One-Year Anniversary, It Has More Than 1.7 Billion Users—Here’s What It May Do Next.” CNBC, 30 Nov. 2023, https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/30/chatgpts-one-year-anniversary-how-the-viral-ai-chatbot-has-changed.html.
- FIFA. “FIFA World Cup 2026’s Legacy in North America – Winning Hearts and Minds.” Inside FIFA, 20 July 2026, https://inside.fifa.com/organisation/news/world-cup-2026-legacy-usa-canada-messi-mls-griezmann-garber.
- Jackson, Joab. “2012: The Year That Coding Became de Rigueur.” Computerworld, 24 Dec. 2012, https://www.computerworld.com/article/1409497/2012-the-year-that-coding-became-de-rigueur.html.
- Mechaber, Ezra. “President Obama Is the First President to Write a Line of Code.” The White House, 10 Dec. 2014, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/12/10/president-obama-first-president-write-line-code.
- Oken, Alicia. “Weekly Wrap Up: ‘A Time to Celebrate a Heroic Life.’” The White House, 13 Dec. 2013, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2013/12/13/weekly-wrap-time-celebrate-heroic-life.
- Rogelberg, Sasha. “Employment for Computer Programmers in the U.S. Has Plummeted to Its Lowest Level Since 1980.” Fortune, 17 Mar. 2025, https://www.yahoo.com/news/employment-computer-programmers-u-plummeted-180040203.html.
- Schultz, Colin. “The First Piece of Code Written by an American President.” Smithsonian Magazine, 9 Dec. 2014, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/obama-becomes-coder-chief-after-trying-his-hand-computer-programming-180953564/.
- Singer, Natasha. “Goodbye, $165,000 Tech Jobs. Student Coders Seek Work at Chipotle.” The New York Times, 11 Aug. 2025, https://www.boston.com/news/national-news/2025/08/11/goodbye-165000-tech-jobs-student-coders-seek-work-at-chipotle/.
- Smith, Megan. “Computer Science for All.” The White House, 30 Jan. 2016, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2016/01/30/computer-science-all.
- Smith, Megan, and Danielle Carnival. “Celebrating Computer Science Education Week, Kids Code at the White House.” The White House, 8 Dec. 2014, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/12/08/celebrating-computer-science-education-week-kids-code-white-house.
- Superprof. US lesson request data, Sept. 2024–Aug. 2026. Internal dataset, 2026.
- “International Arrivals in Japan Exceeded 42 Million in 2025, 10 Million More than 2019.” Travel Voice, 26 Jan. 2026, https://www.travelvoice.jp/english/international-arrivals-in-japan-exceeded-42-million-in-2025-10-million-more-than-2019.
- Tyson, Mark. “Jensen Huang Says Kids Shouldn’t Learn to Code — They Should Leave It Up to AI.” Tom’s Hardware, 25 Feb. 2024, https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/jensen-huang-advises-against-learning-to-code-leave-it-up-to-ai.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Computer Programmers.” Occupational Outlook Handbook, 27 Aug. 2026, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/computer-programmers.htm.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Registered Nurses.” Occupational Outlook Handbook, 27 Aug. 2026, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/registered-nurses.htm.
- USTA. “Tennis Participation Continues to Surge with Six Consecutive Years of Growth, Reaching 27.3 Million Players in 2025.” USTA, 18 Feb. 2026, https://www.usta.com/en/home/stay-current/national/tennis-participation-continues-to-surge-with-six-consecutive-yea.html.
Your tutor is waiting for you on Superprof!
Want to give it a try?
Let our experts impress you!
Summarize with AI:
Did you like this article? Leave a rating!
Loading...
